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A large part of growing up to be a decent person is learning that the world doesn't revolve around you; there are billions of other people you share the world with and they all matter, too. As mentioned, this is something that is learned, often by facing consequences for failing to realize it. Being rich often removes these consequences from the equation. In some cases, depending on the environment, treating people like dirt is even encouraged. Some actually see the differences in social expectations and conclude that they receive better treatment because they're better people, which just further worsens the problem.

I don't think all well-off people are jerks, or even most of them. I think that maybe more of them are jerks than normal because they don't always face the same consequences the rest of us do for acting selfish. I believe most of them are perfectly decent, though, as are most people in general. And there are certainly plenty of regular people who haven't learned basic human decency, too; it's hardly a problem limited to the rich.

Rich people can get away with more so = meaner.
When was the last time you saw white collar crime punished as harshly as regular crime?

That's sorta why I brought this up. You see, when it comes to crime it's all about money and who represents you. The more money you spend on a lawyer gets you a less harsh sentence if one at all not to mention they can expunge their record with their money while the rest are stuck with it making their lives more difficult. In the eyes of the court system if you're not rich you're a nobody this is why some can get away with capital crimes like rape or murder while the average citizen gets locked up or slammed with fines for a petty drug charge (why war on drugs exists btw). I find this rediculous because if you commit a crime (drug use shouldn't be a crime but that's another topic) rich or poor you should have to deal with the consequences but rich can keep getting away with whatever because they got money. How can we say were created equal? It's all about profit and control.

That's sorta why I brought this up. You see, when it comes to crime it's all about money and who represents you. The more money you spend on a lawyer gets you a less harsh sentence if one at all not to mention they can expunge their record with their money while the rest are stuck with it making their lives more difficult. In the eyes of the court system if you're not rich you're a nobody this is why some can get away with capital crimes like rape or murder while the average citizen gets locked up or slammed with fines for a petty drug charge (why war on drugs exists btw). I find this rediculous because if you commit a crime (drug use shouldn't be a crime but that's another topic) rich or poor you should have to deal with the consequences but rich can keep getting away with whatever because they got money. How can we say were created equal? It's all about profit and control.

It really is. A person themselves should matter, not their pocketbook.
Also if a poor person steals soup from a store to feed their kid you'll see how differently they're painted than a CEO embezzling millions from a pension fund.

As a now wealthy person who grew up dirt poor, I know enough about having nothing and struggling to never let it get to my head and stay humble. I absolutely loathe the concept of money. People would tell me "well that's because you're poor." Now, I'm nowhere near poor, and I still feel the same way. Especially growing up in a capitalist nightmare like the US, you get a great glimpse at how greed and the pursuit of money poisons everything in its path. The world would be a much better place without money, and I'd really love it if we would stop using one's bank account as a measure of who they are as a person.

A large part of growing up to be a decent person is learning that the world doesn't revolve around you; there are billions of other people you share the world with and they all matter, too. As mentioned, this is something that is learned, often by facing consequences for failing to realize it. Being rich often removes these consequences from the equation. In some cases, depending on the environment, treating people like dirt is even encouraged. Some actually see the differences in social expectations and conclude that they receive better treatment because they're better people, which just further worsens the problem.

I don't think all well-off people are jerks, or even most of them. I think that maybe more of them are jerks than normal because they don't always face the same consequences the rest of us do for acting selfish. I believe most of them are perfectly decent, though, as are most people in general. And there are certainly plenty of regular people who haven't learned basic human decency, too; it's hardly a problem limited to the rich.

I think twocows puts it well. It's not so much that rich people are all assholes, it's just that those who grow up wealthy tend to develop as people in circumstances that encourage their worst traits, so there's going to be more rich assholes than poor assholes.

There's other factors too, like mean people having traits that are more likely to lead to success in business thus meaning more mukty people get wealthy by other means as well.

the acquisition of wealth usually puts people in a place where they're alienated from other people and their struggles - namely, working-class people. It's pretty easy to forget how hard it can be for other people if you get out of that position.

Just look at Notch, for example. Is relatively friendly when he started out and was humble about the success of Minecraft, makes a few billion and suddenly he's super smug and tweeting out reactionary bullmuk. Of course, it doesn't help he flitted around the circles where the garbage white nationalist rhetoric started pouring out from (4chan was a big part of the reason Minecraft got popular, for example), but still. it's pretty clear having that amount of resources and power can make someone feel more self-important than they really are.

There's another problem: in a world of theorethical meritocracy, in which people are supposed to get bigger rewards the greater their effort and talent, people who were born with sacks of gold on their pockets (or who get it by absolutely random circumstances) tend to believe they are smarter, or harder-working, or somehow "more deserving" than other people. At which point they rationalize that sharing or helping the poor is bad and wrong because if they are poor is because they haven't worked as har as they did and therefore deserve to stay poor, despite the fact that they themselves did nothing to deserve their wealth, other than be born in the right circumstances or buy the right lotto ticket. And without empathy, mankind is just a feral species.

There's another problem: in a world of theorethical meritocracy, in which people are supposed to get bigger rewards the greater their effort and talent, people who were born with sacks of gold on their pockets (or who get it by absolutely random circumstances) tend to believe they are smarter, or harder-working, or somehow "more deserving" than other people. At which point they rationalize that sharing or helping the poor is bad and wrong because if they are poor is because they haven't worked as har as they did and therefore deserve to stay poor, despite the fact that they themselves did nothing to deserve their wealth, other than be born in the right circumstances or buy the right lotto ticket. And without empathy, mankind is just a feral species.

Largely agreed, but my wife is a huge exception. She inherited a massive sum from her mother, and she understands how incredibly lucky she is. It doesn't go to her head, and she actually gives more of it away than she uses for herself. Before I met her, I didn't think I'd ever meet someone as leftist as myself, but she's pretty staunch about redistributing wealth and taking the power back from the wealthy elite few.

But yes, whenever I hear some conservative twit go on about the poor "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps the way they did," I begin to seethe.

Rich people can get away with more so = meaner.
When was the last time you saw white collar crime punished as harshly as regular crime?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShinyUmbreon189

That's sorta why I brought this up. You see, when it comes to crime it's all about money and who represents you. The more money you spend on a lawyer gets you a less harsh sentence if one at all not to mention they can expunge their record with their money while the rest are stuck with it making their lives more difficult. In the eyes of the court system if you're not rich you're a nobody this is why some can get away with capital crimes like rape or murder while the average citizen gets locked up or slammed with fines for a petty drug charge (why war on drugs exists btw). I find this rediculous because if you commit a crime (drug use shouldn't be a crime but that's another topic) rich or poor you should have to deal with the consequences but rich can keep getting away with whatever because they got money. How can we say were created equal? It's all about profit and control.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke

It really is. A person themselves should matter, not their pocketbook.
Also if a poor person steals soup from a store to feed their kid you'll see how differently they're painted than a CEO embezzling millions from a pension fund.

Bernie Madoff was a market maker who got busted for the largest Ponzi scheme in human history, totaling about $64 billion in fraudulent accounting when he was arrested in 2008. Aged 70, he was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. He’s a very recent and seminal example of how money won’t save you from yourself.

To contrast, there is also Jordan Belfort, of semi-recent fame in the DiCaprio movie The Wolf of Wall Street, who was also convicted of financial fraud. He was sentenced to 22 months in the pokey and over $100 million in restitution, and came out afterward as a reformed public speaker.

Both of these men had money out the speakers, but their fates as conmen couldn’t have been more different. This is probably because they conned two entirely different classes of people: Madoff defrauded the American elite, the ruling class right under all of their noses of billions. Belfort’s Stratton Oakmont ran his pump-and-dump scam through penny stocks via telemarketing, mostly scamming the unimportant, unconnected general public of individually nominal amounts en masse.

Another thing to note about Madoff: “Judge Chin had not received any mitigating factor letters from friends or family testifying to Madoff’s good deeds. ‘The absence of such support is telling,’ he said.” (source) Madoff was not socially connected enough to save him. He had no powerful friends, being a pariah in the New York elite. This is just conjecture on my part, but perhaps Jordan Belfort was more friendly and had people who cared enough about him to want to see a reformed Belfort succeed with the rest of his life.

Money is a means to an ends, and that makes it the prime secondary to the dynamics of social power – in other words, the real stuff. Social connections are what enables perhaps the most egregious of institutional cheat codes, my favourite example so far being the legacy of Jeffrey Epstein, a serial child rapist who was shielded for years by the feds who continually obstructed and shut down investigations, and provided him with 6-day-a-week 12-hours-a-day work release that isn’t allowed for sex offenders when he finally was convicted, with his “jail cell” being in a comfy private wing of some uppity penitentiary. Jeffrey didn’t need to be rich to break the entire democratic system for his personal perversions.

–

To answer the topic more generally, I think twocows had it right by and large. I’ll add my personal experience with rich people—and by personal experience I mean dinner outings, board meetings, and various other face-to-face contact with very rich and often powerful people—is that they’re generally exactly like everyone else under the skin, albeit with more resources and nicer things. It’s unflattering, no doubt, but it’s mostly the same try-hard parents, same half-lit kids who need to get their lives together, same 20-somethings having dates for probably nothing, and so on. Where poor try-hard parents force their kids out, into roommate situations or debted college, rich ones force them into school out-of-pocket, or sometimes cut them off. Poor half-lit kids go dirt biking or lose themselves in social media, and rich ones often do much the same. The rich 20-something daters go to Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay, and the poor one’s go to Chick-Fil-A and have same good time. Regardless of income, the parents still try, the kids still be kids, the young’ns still float about… people are still people. There isn’t much more to say.

Speaking from my personal experience growing up in the United States, I think the answer lies in the fact that the appearance and pursuit of wealth is always posititively reinforced. In a capitalist society your quality of life can significantly vary depending on how much capital you have. If you have money, you can wear well-made clothes, drive a nice car, get an education from a good school, have a beautiful home and receive all the medical care you need.

Whether it is deserved or not, wealth is synonymous with having power, because you have access to the very best. Society also looks favorably upon professions that are traditionally high-earning like doctors, lawyers, actors. If somebody is constantly treated as if they are special, then they may very well begin to believe it.

For the record, I don't think rich people are any better or worse than anybody else. They are just people, and some are very nice. However, my point is that soceity can shape the way we behave and our values. And in a society where money is sought after and admired, and even essential to sustain itself, this can be potentially problematic. Middle class or working class people can be just as negatively influenced by money, and exhibit the same uncaring behavior to our brothers and sisters the world over. An example would be a "regular person" who walks by a starving homeless man on the street without helping him, rationalizing that "It is nobody's fault but his own that he is like that, he doesn't have a job and doesn't work hard like I do."

This disturbing mentality I have seen is essentially the reverse of "I'm rich so I am somebody special." It is, "You are poor, so you are worthless, a parasite" I find it perhaps even more ignorant and dangerous than the former.

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